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Before we get down to this week’s recap, a quick update on the current status of Rebel Media: Despite the flurry of coverage predicting its imminent demise, as of press time, they’re still up and running, albeit with a shorter list of active contributors than it boasted when The Rebel to Rabble Review made its debut at the beginning of the summer.

First, though, let’s check in on the left side of the Canadian activist journalism spectrum, where Ricochet writer Cory Collinsdid his best to get New Democrat leadership hopeful JagmeetSingh to go on the record with his position on pipelines – specifically, whether he’d ever support such a project. Singh, however, was unwilling to abandon his standard response.

He’s happy to deliver a “really clear no” on Kinder Morgan and Energy East, but not prepared to come out against a theoretical future proposal, provided it meets his three criteria: respecting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, being in line with Canada’s overall climate goals and delivering benefits for Canada on a local level.

Elsewhere on the site, a night or two at the theatre inspired Hadani Ditmars to ponder the prospect of Trump: The Musical!

Over at Rabble, meanwhile, Yves Angler suggests that “some good might come in Canada from neo-fascists marching in Charlottesville” — that it might be the catalyst for a debate over whether it’s time to take down monuments and tributes honouring those who “helped conquer Africa.” In Halifax, campaigns are underway to remove a plaque and rename a street honouring a pair of Canadians involved in colonial efforts. Angler points out that there is “no lack of other such memorials to target across the Great White North.”

As a bonus, he says, it could also “help educate the public about Canada’s history on the continent and European colonialism more generally.”

Also on Rabble this week: Labour reporter Meagan Gillmore looks at what happens after a labour dispute comes to an end, and those who were just on the picket line go back to work.

“Even workers who return to more receptive environments find adjusting can take a while,” she writes.

Meanwhile, Ed Finnwonders if what he describes as “mounting … public pressure” in support of universal prescription drug coverage could finally make Tommy Douglas’s “grand vision” of a complete public health system a reality – with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne serving as the “unlikely reincarnation” of the New Democrat founding father.

Finally, to mark the sixth anniversary of Jack Layton’s passing, Rabble has teamed up with his widow, Olivia Chow, and the Institute for Change Leaders to launch the Jack Layton Journalism for Change Fellowship:a $2,000 stipend for a three-month stint at Rabble HQ, during which the chosen candidate will be expected to “write at least six articles, one long-form article, and participate biweekly in story meetings with Rabble staff.”

Our last stop on the left-of-centre side of the agenda mediasphere takes us to Press Progress, where United Conservative Party leadership candidate Jason Kenney’s non-appearance at the Edmonton Pride Parade, as well as Calgary Pride organizers’ decision to reject an application from the party to take part in next month’s march, prompted a trip down not-all-that-distant memory lane.

Kenney, PP notes, “once argued that constitutional protections enshrining rights on the basis of sexual orientation “opened the door” for “polygamists” and “advocates of incest,” as recorded in the November 4, 2002 edition of The Report Newsmagazine, which PP describes as “a now defunct socially-conservative journal.”

Specifically, Kenney apparently told the publication that it was “completely inconsistent for secular liberals to argue traditional conceptions of the family have no place in society when it comes to homosexual marriage, but then object to polygamy, using traditional arguments,” and suggested that the Supreme Court had “invented a constitutional right to sexual orientation,” which “opened the door for polygamists, advocates of incest, and others to claim the same status as homosexuals.”

With that, let’s jump the fence over to Rebel Media, where the embattled Ezra Levant is, predictably, calling on his army to “stand with the Rebel” by – yes, filling out yet another contact form to “let us know that we can count on you,” with a goal of collecting the contact details of 30,000 backers.

(As of this morning, the counter reads 10,712, but it’s not clear how frequently it updates.)

“A lot of people want The Rebel to die, and this seems to be their moment; they’re all piling on,” the pitch begins.

“The mainstream media says we’re dead already. Canada’s biggest newspaper, The Toronto Star wrote, “Is this the beginning of the end for Canada’s Rebel Media?” Their answer, is “of course”. But they’ve said that since the day we were born.

“It’s really been just 30 journalists, but when they all have newspapers or TV stations or websites, it can sound like the whole world is screaming at you.

But I’m not going to let you down. I’m not hiding, quitting, or going away.”

After giving his own account of events leading up to this point, Levant does, to his credit, lay out his plan to “fix a few things” so the Rebel can “get to the next level,” including bringing in ‘’more management help,” both on the business side and in editorial content, hiring “new on-air talent and journalists” to replace now-and-soon-to-be former stars like Faith Goldy, Gavin McInnes and “some other freelancers,” and, perhaps most remarkably, pledging “transparency in crowdfunding” — more on that here.

Some of you doubtless are saying right now: Didn’t they launch a major the-time-is-now it’s-all-coming-down-to-this campaign just a few weeks ago to build a “conservative alternative” to YouTube?

Since it was launched at the beginning of August, the “They Can’t Stop Us” campaign has raised just over $190,000, which puts it more than halfway to the $302,000 goal, although it’s worth noting that donations seem to have slowed down considerably since the initial burst.

Over the last two weeks, the listed total has only gone up by $20,000 or so, although that presumably doesn’t take into account any sizeable cheques that are still in the mail, or other transfers not recorded on the website.

Moving beyond Rebel’s coverage of itself, the top headlines from the last few days include:

a predictably lively rebuttal of the Ontario Elementary Teachers’ Federation’s proposal to strip Sir John A. Macdonald’s name from thousands of schools across the province, which B.C. correspondent Christopher Wilson argues “demonizes” Canada’s first prime minister “while ignoring racist Liberal PMs” such as, in his view, Sir Wilfrid Laurier;

a scathing rebuke of the “busybody censors” at the Canadian Human Rights Commission for attempting to “use the current refugee crisis on Canada’s borders to crack down on your freedom of speech,” courtesy of Alberta correspondent Sheila Gunn Reid;

and finally, a crie de coeur from “mission specialist” David Menzies over those “Slow Down, My Mom Works Here” that have been showing up at construction sites in recent years, which Menzies sees as “yet another example of how fatherhood has been devalued by the progressives” — possibly because he’s somehow never spotted one of the equally commonplace “Slow Down, My Dad Works Here” signs.